


Beautiful Boy

by petersnotkingyet



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Car Accidents, Child Abuse, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Gen, Injury, Not by Sam, Rangers loving each other in the background, Sam works weird hours bc fishing boat, Sickfic, Step-parents, Step-siblings, Vignettes, parenting, ya so i'm writing power rangers fanfiction now lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 09:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20207530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petersnotkingyet/pseuds/petersnotkingyet
Summary: At the end of the day, Sam just wants to do right by his son.





	Beautiful Boy

Sam was 26 when his wife got pregnant. They were stable, and plenty of their friends had kids already. Sam’s job kept him away a lot, but the money was decent and the insurance was good. He and Melissa were no teen parents, but Sam just felt so _young._

And he was terrified. Terrified that something would go wrong, that he would get hurt on the boat and not be able to work anymore. Terrified that he wouldn’t be a good father, wouldn’t love his son enough, wouldn’t know how to be there for him.

But as soon as Jason was born, the whole world shifted. Sam never knew he could love someone that much until he stood next to his wife’s hospital bed and held his beautiful boy. Jason was perfect, and the love was almost blinding. Sam knew he would move heaven and earth to do right by his son.

-

Jason was four when Sam came home from work to find him sitting in his bedroom floor, sobbing. Melissa was asleep on the couch, and dinner was in the microwave.

“What’s the matter, buddy?” Sam asked when his son stayed on the floor, oblivious to his presence, instead of running to meet him at the door—hollering _Daddy, Daddy, Daddy_—like he usually did. Jason lifted his head, finally realizing he was home, and Sam’s stomach dropped.

“Jace, what happened to your face?” he asked, sitting down in the floor and lifting him into his lap. His son had a black eye.

Jason—his four year, his beautiful boy who loved race cars and Lego and bubbles in his bath—wiped his nose on the back of his hand and said, “Mommy hit me.”

Sam froze. For a split second, he thought he might be sick. All the bruises and scrapes he assumed naturally came from being a clumsy little boy came to mind. The broken arm back in May. Melissa had said he fell.

Operating on autopilot, Sam held his son until he stopped crying. Then, he put Jason on the bed and packed a bag of tiny clothes and shoes and pajamas. He told Jason to pick out some toys to take and went to pack his own bag. They left Melissa asleep on the couch and dinner keeping warm in the microwave. Once Jason was asleep in the guest bedroom at his grandma’s house, Sam called the police.

-

Jason was seven when Sam remarried. He had been so, so careful about letting new people into his son’s life, but Amy had found her way in somehow. At the wedding, Jason was Sam’s best man, and Amy included him in her vows.

As far as Sam could tell, Jason had forgotten a lot about his mom. He called Amy by her first name, and he wasn’t afraid of women the way he used to be. He seemed like he was doing well, but Sam was still terrified every time he had to leave him.

Ten months after the wedding, they found out that Amy was pregnant. Jason—freshly eight years old—was overjoyed to have a baby sister. Then, he came home from second grade one day frowning, his shoulders tight with tension.

“What’s a half sister mean?” he asked while Sam tucked him into bed that night.

“Where’d you hear that?” Sam asked. He hadn’t really wanted to have this conversation.

“Kyle at school said that the baby is going to be my half-sister,” Jason said. “But she’s going to be a whole baby, right?”

“Right,” Sam said. “Half-sister’ just means that you have one shared parent instead of two.”

“Because I had a different mom?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “You guys are still going to love each other the same as if you had both the same parents.”

“Promise?” Jason asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said, leaning down to hug his beautiful boy one more time. “I promise.”

-

Jason was almost nine when Pearl was born. He held her with awe in his eyes, and it softened all the things inside Sam that had gone sharp and brittle the day he came home and found his son with a black eye.

-

Jason was ten when the school counselor called Sam in for a meeting and handed over a pamphlet about ADHD. _Okay, _Sam thought, looking down at the colorful pictures and small print. _We can handle this._

-

Jason was thirteen when he took his sister trick-or-treating because Amy was sick and Sam was working. He was a teenager now, gangly and a little moody, but still the same sweet kid under it all.

-

Jason was fourteen when Melissa showed up at the house. Sam and Amy were both working, so he locked Pearl in her bedroom and called his dad, crying harder than he had since elementary school.

“Jace?” Sam said into the phone when he finally got to it. It was hard to take personal calls on a fishing boat. “What’s wrong, buddy?”

“Mom is here,” Jason said, his voice breaking. “My mom. She’s on the porch. She won’t leave.”

“Don’t open the door,” Sam said immediately.

“I didn’t,” Jason said. “But she saw me and Pearl watching TV. I put Pearl in her room.”

“Jason, I want you to call Amy,” Sam said, trying to sound calm. “Tell her what’s happening and that you need her to come home. I’m going to call the police, okay?”

“Okay,” Jason said shakily. Sam pressed his fist to his forehead and wished he had the type of job where he could just jump in his car and go home.

“Everything is going to be fine,” Sam promised. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

-

Jason was fifteen when he made the varsity football team. Only a sophomore, and he was the starting quarterback. The other guys were kind of shitheads, but Sam knew that football could be Jason’s ticket to college. Sports scholarships were hard to come by, but his boy was _good._

That was where their relationship started to change though. Sam wouldn’t see it until years later, but as soon as Jason made varsity, it seemed like football was all they could talk about. The pressure made him anxious, and the other guys on the team fed into his impulsivity. Sam couldn’t see that though. He was blind to everything except how good Jason was and what a shame it would be to waste that.

-

Jason was seventeen when he rolled his truck. Sam got the call minutes after he got home from work, and his heart dropped. Amy would need to stay home with Pearl, so he woke her up to tell her where he was going and then sped the whole way to the hospital.

“He has a concussion,” Dr. Franks said when Sam was finally allowed back to see his son. Jason was covered in tiny cuts from the broken glass, and bruises were already forming on every bit of exposed skin Sam could see. “His CT looks good, though. He’s just sleeping from the pain medication.”

Thank God. _Thankgodthankgodthankgodthankgod. _He’d nearly been sick when he came into the room and saw Jason unconscious. The police officer standing in the hallway only made it worse.

“Sam, he’s got four fractures around his knee, and there’s a lot of soft tissue damage,” the doctor said slowly. Ben Franks had graduated high school a year behind Sam. He had a boy the same age as Jason, a senior who played trumpet in the marching band. They saw each other at football games every Friday night. “He’s going to need surgery and physical therapy to walk on this. He can’t play.”

Just like that, the future Sam had imagined for his son evaporated. No season, no scouts, no scholarship. It was gone.

“This could have been a lot worse. I’ve seen kids die in accidents like that,” Dr. Franks said gently. “We can release him as soon as he wakes up. I’ll get someone in here to schedule the knee surgery with you, and I’ll call in a prescription for more pain meds.”

Sam nodded, and Dr. Franks left the room. The police officer in the hallway stayed where he was and pretended not to see Sam crying over the beautiful boy he almost lost.

-

Jason was seventeen when some kind of giant gold monster tore Angel Grove apart.

And he wasn’t at home.

His bedroom door had been shut all day, and Sam had just assumed he was inside. But then he saw whatever the hell was happening in town on TV, and he needed to lay eyes on his son. Pearl and Amy were on the couch beside him, safe. Sam opened Jason’s door to check on him, shocked as he realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been inside his son’s room, and Jason just wasn’t here.

“Where’s Jace?” Sam asked as he came back into the living room.

“He’s not in his room?” Amy said.

“I’m going to find him.”

“You can’t just go drive around,” Amy protested. “That’s crazy; it’s not safe. You don’t even know where he is.”

“I’ll call him,” Sam said, hurriedly putting his shoes on and grabbing his keys from the counter.

“Sam-”

“I’m not going to sit here while my son is out there!” Sam yelled. “Take Pearl and go to my mom’s, okay? It’s probably safer further out of town.”

“Okay,” Amy agreed softly. “Be careful.”

Sam nodded and went to find his boy.

-

Jason was seventeen when Sam figured out he was one of the rangers. In terms of hiding a secret identity, his son was only somewhat better than Tony Stark. Sam put it together about thirty seconds after he was pulled from his flipped truck. That reignited the leftover fear from Jason’s accident, but it was nothing compared to watching his seventeen year old fight a giant space monster.

Still, Sam tried to do right by his son. He didn’t question Jason’s new group of friends who all had clear color preferences or why Jason’s limp was suddenly gone. He didn’t ask why Jason always came home with wet clothes and bruises or how he seemed to be getting around house arrest. He put the article about the rangers on the fridge and tried to tell Jason he loved him and he was proud of him more often.

At dinner one day, Sam told his son he should have his friends over soon, and the uncertain look on Jason’s face made him heartsick. Some of the kids had been in the house before, but only ever long enough for Jason to put on a jacket and throw himself out the door.

Four months after the giant monster incident, Sam woke up to the sound of the front door swinging open.

“I can’t believe he came to school like this,” a girl’s voice said as Sam crept down the hall. “God, he’s burning up.”

There were four teenagers standing in his kitchen. One of the boys—Zack—was carrying Jason. His eyes were glassy and fever-bright, and his cheeks were flushed. Kimberly had already filled a glass of water and was digging in the medicine cabinet, and Trini was wetting a washcloth at the sink. Billy froze when he saw Sam, but none of the other kids noticed him. They took Jason into his room and shut the door.

The five of them stayed in there all day, voices soft and the TV on low. They started to trickle out around the time school would normally let out. Kimberly and Billy were the last to leave, and it was Kim who marched up to Sam after easing Jason’s bedroom door shut.

“Jace’s sick,” she said. “It’s down now, but his fever was pretty high this morning. He slept most of the day. We gave him Tylenol at four, so will you make sure he takes more around eight?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sam agreed, swallowing a smile.

“We’ll be back after school tomorrow,” Billy said.

It wasn’t exactly how Sam had imagined Jason bringing his friends over, but he’d take it.

At dinner time, he heated up the leftover soup that Zack had made and went into Jason’s room. Jason was in bed, wearing a sweatshirt that definitely wasn’t his, and staring tiredly at a TV show he’d already seen. His cheeks weren’t as red, but his eyes were still fever glazed.

“How are you feeling?” Sam asked, setting the TV tray on the bed.

“Okay,” Jason croaked.

“Sure,” Sam agreed sarcastically, and Jason smiled a little. “I can’t remember the last time you actually stayed in bed all day. You know you don’t have to go to school when you feel this bad, right?”

“I guess I didn’t really realize how rough I felt,” Jason admitted. “I was pretty out of it.”

Sam could have told you that from the fact that he’d been dead asleep while one of his friends had him cradled to his chest, but he didn’t mention it.

“Next time you’re out of it,” he said instead, “please don’t drive yourself to school. I think I’d have a heart attack if you got in another accident.”

“Sorry,” Jason said.

“Here, I heated up some soup,” Sam said. “And I’ve got Gatorade and Tylenol. We need to make sure you’re staying hydrated.”

Jason ate most of the soup and drank half of the Gatorade before he dozed back off. Sam sat with him a little longer before he cut the lights off and took the bowl back to the kitchen. When he checked on Jason before he went to bed, the seventeen year old was still sleeping.

Just past three o’clock in the morning, Pearl shook Sam awake. He squinted at the clock, confused, before saying, “What is it, honey?”

“Jason’s crying,” she said.

“Go back to bed, alright?” Sam said as he got out of bed. “He just doesn’t feel good. I’ll take care of him.”

Sam hurried to the kitchen to follow the same routine Kim and Trini had that morning—water, Tylenol, cold washcloth. He could hear the quiet crying and mumbling from Jason’s room that had woken Pearl. Jace had always talked in his sleep.

“Hey, wake up, buddy,” Sam whispered, shaking Jason’s shoulder gently. He was wrapped in his blankets like he was cold, but his face was flushed. His fever must have spiked again when the Tylenol wore off. “You’re okay, Jace. I’ve got you.”

Jason’s eyes finally opened.

“Dad?” he mumbled.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Can you sit up just a little? I need you to take some pills.”

Groaning, Jason let his dad manhandle him into a slightly more upright position. Sam held the water for him and settled Jason back against the pillows once he’d swallowed the Tylenol. When he put the cold washcloth against his face, Jason flinched.

“It’s cold,” he said, reflexively reaching to move it.

“I know, buddy,” Sam said. “Just for a little while, okay?”

Jason nodded a little and pulled his arm back under the blanket. The door creaked open, but Jason didn’t seem to notice. It was Amy, holding an icepack wrapped in a dish towel and a jar of Vaporub.

“Thanks,” Sam whispered as he took them. Amy kissed his temple and left him to take care of his son.

“Dad?” Jason said after a few minutes, surprising Sam. He looked like he’d already gone back to sleep.

“Yeah, buddy?”

“Don’t go.”

“I’m right here,” Sam promised, leaning down to kiss his warm forehead. Almost eighteen years later, and the love was still blinding. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” Jason mumbled. Jason, his four year old who ran to meet him at the door, his little best man, Pearl’s big brother with poor impulse control and a heart of gold, the teenage superhero.

His beautiful boy.


End file.
